Toby Harnden was the Daily Telegraph's US Editor, based in Washington DC, from 2006 to 2011. Click here for Toby's website. Follow him on Twitter here @tobyharnden and on Facebook here. He is the author of the bestselling book Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story Britain's War in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama was right to see coffins coming back to Dover

It is easy to be cynical about President Barack Obama's helicopter trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to see the return of the bodies of 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan. The broadcast pictures earned him very positive press coverage and some detected an implicit rebuke to President George W. Bush in the trip because this was something Mr Bush never did.

I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don’t understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That’s really hard for me to get my head around. I think its an honourable and important thing for us to pay tribute. There’s no greater sacrifice people make to the nation. It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this. I’d like to add the most important way for the president to pay tribute to those who sacrifice is to back them up.

That's a harsh critique. Bush certainly did honour fallen troops, making private visits to the families of dead troops, for instance here in Maine, here in North Carolina and here in Alaska to pick just three of many scores of examples. There was something very dignified about the way Bush did this without fanfare and away from the public eye.

It was not the case that Bush decided on the policy of banning the photographing the return of remains. In fact, it was put in place in 1991, making it the policy of President George H.W. Bush and President Bill Clinton as well. Bush took a lot of political flak for it, including in this inaccurate New York Times editorial today, which said:

The Bush policy was to prohibit any news media coverage of the returning war dead and to never show the president within a camera-lens’ length of the dolorous homecomings. Under Mr. Obama, the Pentagon reversed the no-coverage policy in February. On Thursday, the president himself took the necessary next step… The pity is President Bush never dared as much.

That's a cheap shot. But I don't think it's fair for Republicans to respond with cheap shots of their own aimed at Obama.

Just as the bodies of all British service personnel land at RAF Lyneham, America's dead come back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, which I visited in 2003. It is an extremely emotional moment for the families that it is also laden with symbolism and national importance. And it is entirely appropriate that the commander-in-chief should be there.

Obama flew to Dover in the middle of the night, thereby not creating nearly as much of a fuss as he could have done. He took only a small press pool with him. His meeting with the families was private.

The way in which a President of the United States chooses to honour America's fallen is obviously a public act – he's the President and his decisions often result in military deaths – but also an intensely personal one. There are times when politics should be put aside – by both sides.